The Loom of Youth Part 27

Rumour flies round a house quickly. In hall several people came up and asked Gordon if it was true. They looked at him curiously with an expression in which surprise and admiration were curiously blended. The old love of notoriety swept over Gordon once more; he felt frightfully bucked with himself. What a devil of a fellow he was, to be sure. He went round the studies in hall, proclaiming his audacity.

"I say, look here, old chap, you needn't tell anyone, but I am going out to Pack Monday Fair; it will be some rag!"

The sensation he caused was highly gratifying. By prayers all his friends and most of his acquaintances knew of it. Of course they would keep it secret. But Gordon knew well that by break next day it would be round the outhouses, and he looked forward to the number of questions he would get asked. To be the hero of an impending escapade was pleasant.

"I say, Davenport," he said in his dormitory that evening, "I am going out to the fair on Monday."

Davenport said nothing, and showed no sign of surprise. Gordon was disappointed.

"Well, what do you think of it?" he said at last.

"That you are a sillier a.s.s than I thought you were," said Davenport.

And as Gordon lay thinking over everything in the dark, he came to the conclusion that Davenport was not so very far wrong after all.

Cold and nervous, Gordon waited for Rudd in the dark boot-hole under the Chief's study on Pack Monday night just before twelve. In stockinged feet he had crept downstairs, opened the creaking door without making any appreciable noise, and then waited in the boot-room, which was filled with the odour of blacking and damp decay. There was a small window at the end of it, through which it was just possible to squeeze out on to the Chief's front lawn. After that all was easy; anyone could clamber over the wall by the V. A green.

There was the sound of feet on the stairs. It seemed to Gordon as if they were bound to wake the whole house. Rudd's figure was framed black in the doorway.

Silently they wormed their way through the window. The damp soil of a flower bed was cold under their feet; with his hand Rudd smoothed out the footprints.

They stole down the silent cloisters, echoing shadows leered at them.

The wall of the V. A green rose dark and sinister. At last breathless among the tombstones by the Abbey they slipped on their boots, turned up coat collars and drew their caps over their eyes.

A minute later the glaring lights of the booths in Cheap Street engulfed them. They were jostled in the crowd. It was, after all, only Hampstead Heath on a small scale.

"Walk up, walk up! All the fun of the fair! Buy a teazer! Buy a teazer!

Buy a teazer! Tickle the girls! Walk up! Try your luck at the darts, sir; now then, sir, come on!"

The confused roar was as music to Gordon's soul. He had the c.o.c.kney love of a fair. The children of London are still true to the coster legends of the Old Kent Road.

Gordon and Rudd did not stop long in Cheap Street. The real business was in the fair fields by Rogers's house. This was only the outskirts.

The next hour pa.s.sed in a dream. Lights flared, rifles snapped at fugitive ping-pong b.a.l.l.s leaping on cascades of water, swing-boats rose heavenwards, merry-go-rounds banged out rag-time choruses. Gordon let himself go. He and Rudd tried everything. After wasting half-a-crown on the cocoanuts, Rudd captured first go at the darts a wonderful vase decorated with the gilt legend, "A Present from Fernhurst," and Gordon at the rifle range won a beautiful china shepherdess which held for days the admiration of the School House, until pining perhaps for its lover, which by no outlay of darts could Gordon secure, it became dislodged from the bracket and fell in pieces on the floor, to be swept away by Arthur, the school _custos_, into the perpetual darkness of the dustbin.

Weary at last, the pair sought the shelter of a small cafe, where they luxuriously sipped lemonade. Faces arose out of the night, pa.s.sed by and faded out again. The sky was red with pleasure, the noise and shrieks grew louder and more insistent. There was a dance going on.

"I say, Rudd, do you dance?"

"No, not much."

"Well, look here, I can, a bit; at any rate I am going to have a bit of fun over there. Let us go on our own for a bit. Meet me here at a quarter to four."

"Right," said Rudd, and continued sipping the lurid poison that called itself American cream soda, and was in reality merely a cheap illness.

Gordon walked in the direction of the dancing. The gra.s.s had been cut quite short in a circle, and to the time of a broken band the town dandies were whirling round, flushed with excitement and the close proximity of a female form. "The Maenads and the Ba.s.sarids," murmured Gordon to himself, and cursed his luck for not knowing any of the girls.

Disconsolately he wandered across to the Bijou Theatre, a tumble-down hut where a huge crowd was jostling and shouting.

He ran into something and half apologised.

"Oh, don't mind me," a high-pitched voice shrieked excitedly.

He turned round and saw the flushed face of a girl of about nineteen looking up at him. She was alone.

"I say," Gordon muttered nervously, "you look a bit lonely, come and have some ginger beer."

"Orl right. I don't mind. Give us your arm!"

They rolled off to a neighbouring stall, where Gordon stood his Juliet countless lemonades and chocolates. He felt very brave and grown-up, and thought contemptuously of Davenport in bed dreaming some fatuous dream, while he was engulfed in noise and colour. This was life. From the stall the two wandered to the swing-boats, and towering high above the tawdry glitter of the revel saw through the red mist the Abbey, austere and still, the School House dormitories stretching silent with suspended life, the cla.s.s-rooms peopled with ghosts.

A plank jarred under the boat.

"Garn, surely it ain't time to stop yet," wailed Emmie.

He had gathered enough courage to ask her her name.

"Have another?" pleaded Gordon.

"No; let us try the lively thing over there. These boats do make me feel so funny-like."

The merry-go-round was just stopping. There was a rush for the horses.

Gordon leapt on one, and leaning down caught Emmie up and sat her in front of him; she lay back in his arms in a languor of satisfied excitement. Her hair blew across his face, stifling him; on every side couples were hugging and squeezing. The sensuous whirl of the machine was acting as a narcotic, numbing thought. He caught her flushed, tired face in his hands and kissed her wildly, beside himself with the excitement of the moment.

"You don't mind, do you?" he murmured in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"Don't be so silly; I have been waiting for that. Now we can get comfy-like."

Her arms were round his neck, her flushed face was hot on his, her hair hung over his shoulders. The strains of _You Made Me Love You_ came inarticulate with pa.s.sion out of the shrieking organ. Her elbow nudged him. Her lips were as fire beneath his. The machine slowed down and stopped. Gordon paid for five extra rounds. Dazed with new and hitherto unrealised sensations, Gordon forgot everything but the strange warm thing nestling in his arms; and he abandoned himself to the pa.s.sion of the moment.

At last their time was up. Closely, her hair on his shoulder, they moved to the dancing circle, and plunged into the throng of the shouting, jostling dancers. Of the next two hours Gordon could remember nothing.

He had vague recollections of streaming hair, of warm hands, and of fierce, wild kisses. Lights flickered, shot skywards, and went out.

Forms loomed before him, a strange weariness came over him, he remembered flinging himself beside her in the gra.s.s and burying his face in her hair. She seemed to speak as from a very long way off. Once more the dance caught them. Then _Auld Lang Syne_ struck up. Hands were clasped, a circle swayed riotously. There were promises to meet next night, promises that neither meant to keep. Rudd was waiting impatiently at the cafe. Once more the wall by the Abbey rose spectral, once more the cloisters echoed vaguely. The boot-hole window creaked.

As the dawn broke tempestuously in the sky Gordon fell across his bed, his brain tired with a thousand memories, all fugitive, all vague, all exquisitely unsubstantial.

With heavy, tired eyes Gordon ran down to breakfast a second before time. He felt utterly weary, exhausted, incapable of effort. People came up and asked him in whispers if everything had turned out well. He answered absentmindedly, incoherently.

"I don't believe you went there at all," a voice jeered.

Gordon did not reply. He merely put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the china shepherdess that he was about to place on the rickety study bracket.

Doubt was silenced.

The long hours of morning school pa.s.sed by on leaden feet; he seemed unable to answer any question right; even the Chief was annoyed.